NEW ORLEANS — When the time comes for the epitaph to be written on this Giants season, it will read something like: “If the games could just have been a minute or two shorter, they could have been a contender.’’

If you’re a Giants fan, you are noticing a detestable trend: Your team continues to turn wins into inexplicable losses by botching late-game situations.

The latest case in point was their wild 52-49 loss to the Saints on Sunday at the Superdome, where they led 49-42 before yielding 10 New Orleans points in the final 36 seconds, climaxed by a 50-yard Kai Forbath field goal as time expired.

The Giants are eight games into this season and already they have lost three of them in the closing seconds — games they should have won, wins that should have them running away with the NFC East with a 7-1 record instead of the 4-4 malaise in which they reside.

The season-opening loss to the Cowboys in Dallas, where they allowed the game-winning TD with seven seconds remaining to lose 27-26, was bad.

Then came the home opener the following week when they lost a 20-10 fourth-quarter lead to the Falcons and lost 24-20 on an Atlanta TD with 1:14 remaining in the game.

Sunday seemed worse than those first two weeks, because the Giants looked as if they were about to steal a game in which they’d gone to extraordinary lengths to give away with an epically poor defensive performance.

“We did pretty much everything we could do on one side of the ball,’’ Giants coach Tom Coughlin said, referring to the Giants offense, which was nearly as prolific as that of the Saints. “We also got a defensive touchdown. It should have been enough. It wasn’t enough.’’

The defensive touchdown to which Coughlin referred was the irony of all ironies on this day when the Giants’ defense — to borrow an oft-used phrase from Rex Ryan — couldn’t stop a nosebleed.

Yet there was cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie blowing up Saints receiver Willie Snead after a catch with a punishing hit that jarred the ball loose and into the arms of teammate Trumaine McBride, who took it 63 yards for a 49-42 lead with 7:11 remaining.

Could it be possible on a day when the Giants’ defense yielded 614 yards and seven TD passes by Saints quarterback Drew Brees, that a defensive play was going to end up being the difference in the game?

Of course not. Not with the Giants’ propensity to push all the wrong buttons in the crucible of the closing seconds.

That the Saints tied the game at 49-49 on Brees’ seventh TD pass of the game with 36 seconds remaining was not the sin. There wasn’t a soul inside the Superdome or watching on TV who truly believed the Giants’ defense was going to make a stop.

Overtime was imminent.

Until Giants punter Brad Wing didn’t punt the ball out of bounds with 25 seconds remaining and the coverage team allowed Saints returner Marcus Murphy to return the ball 24 yards into Giants’ territory.

Then the bad got worse.

Giants safety Craig Dahl, making a terrific second-effort play, chased Murphy down from behind and ripped the ball from him, but it bounced right into the hands of Snead, who was tackled by Wing.

Wing, however, took Snead down by the face mask.

A flag was thrown. Then the referees said there was no foul on the play. And then, after one of those ill-fated cluster-you-know-what conferences amongst themselves, they reversed their initial reversed call and walked off the 15 yards for the face mask.

Now the Saints had the ball at the Giants 32-yard line with five seconds remaining and from there, Forbath’s first field goal as a Saint sealed yet another late-game disaster for the Giants.

“I never could get a word out of [the referees] the whole game; they “They had their backs to me and they were huddled,’’ Coughlin said when asked if he got an explanation.

The bottom line is the Giants could have avoided the endgame fiasco had Wing been instructed to punt the ball out of bounds.

“We kicked it in such a way that we should have had better coverage,’’ Coughlin said.

“We just can’t let them get into that position to begin with,’’ Wing said.

“I missed a couple of tackles on [Murphy] early,” Dahl said, “and then just hustled back, ripped the ball out and it popped right into [Snead’s] hands. It was just a lucky bounce.’’

The Giants, though, put the Saints in position to get lucky.

“We should have won the game,’’ Coughlin said, “and we didn’t win the game.’’